


mud on our knees (we won't wash it off)

by amako



Series: ShikaSakuWeek 2019 [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Adopted Children, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Civil War, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Haruno Clan-centric, Haruno Sakura-centric, Hatake Kakashi Critical, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Not A Fix-It, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Post-Fourth Shinobi War, Trying to be realistic with how the Naruto world is going, Uchiha Sasuke Critical, Uzumaki Naruto Critical, War, and other children from current one, and you can FIGHT ME ON THIS, because this is how it works in real life, children of different relationship, instead of parents, not many relationships are for life, raising children in community, so characters in this had children from previous marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 03:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20828456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amako/pseuds/amako
Summary: “GET DOWN!”Sakura doesn't wait for an explanation, doesn't even stop to think as she crumbles to the ground, plastering her whole body against the sticky, wet earth. Cheek crushed against a puddle, the filthy water going in her nose and her eye, she frantically tries to look around her while moving as little as possible. The sight calms her down as much as it can ; all the other bodies, face down against the earth, all have red or pink hair, and the familiar pitch black body suit with the blood red arm patch, what should have been a white circle stained with dirt, blood, and shit.





	mud on our knees (we won't wash it off)

**Author's Note:**

> beware of the chose not to use archive warnings (though i'm willing to say it's not because of graphic violence or abuse or rape/non-con)
> 
> ShikaSaku Week 2019  
Day 2: mud on our knees
> 
> this is supposed to be a "what if". what if naruto isn't a great hokage. what is the clan system doesn't work. what if, instead of going to war with other shinobi nations, konoha turns against itself. what if there is a konoha civil war. you don't have to read this if you don't want to question your views of the naruto world. this world is six pages of being critical of the naruto world and i know it's not everyone's cup of tea. it's fine by me. read what makes you happy.  
also there are a lot of real-life believes of mine in this, notably regarding raising children and my view of the nuclear family and the idea that in real life it's very common to have children from different relationships instead of one true love. again, you don't have to read.
> 
> i'm a bit angry because i wanted to post this on time and it got out of hand and it's much longer and much more complicated than it should have been. so there's that. i hope you enjoy anyway, and the next one is almost finished so you should have it soon. tell me what you think!!

“GET DOWN!”

Sakura doesn't wait for an explanation, doesn't even stop to think as she crumbles to the ground, plastering her whole body against the sticky, wet earth. Cheek crushed against a puddle, the filthy water going in her nose and her eye, she frantically tries to look around her while moving as little as possible. The sight calms her down as much as it can ; all the other bodies, face down against the earth, have red or pink hair, and the familiar pitch black body suit with the blood red arm patch, what should have been a white circle stained with dirt, blood, and shit.

Her own patch was ripped from her suit when she lost her left arm, a week ago. Her cousin put a new one on her right arm and sewn shut the sleeve of her left arm to protect her still tender stump. He didn't look at her with pity, or sadness. In his eyes was the same thing that still burns in hers, in the rest of their clan. Pure, unadulterated wrath, an unashamed blood rage and thirst for revenge. Her arm would be avenged, just like all the dead they had suffered. They're winning now. It's just a matter of time.

Once the last explosion is confirmed to be the last, Sakura gets up quickly, reuniting with the three other members of her squad. The four of them are the only shinobi of the Haruno Clan, so they have been named the _de facto_ leaders with the approval of the Clan Head.

“What's our next move?” Hanako asks, brushing caked dirt from her hands. She's a chūnin, on a clear path to become a tokujo because of the dōjutsu she had developed, to the entire clan's surprise. It's nothing as strong as a sharingan or byakugan, but her iris-less, entirely grey eyes allow her short burst of speed that are so strong they look like teleportation.

“Kura and I are still working on the seal,” Nadamaru says, his arm curling around Sakura's waist. She presses without shame against her cousin, her head falling on his shoulder. Nadamaru and her are the two jōnin of their little Sabotage squad, him having been in the Unit since his promotion to jōnin a year ago and her having joined only a few months before the beginning of the war.

Mikata hums, before asking: “I'm taking Shikamaru with me and we're going to prepare the new set of traps. Did any of you finish the poisons we talked about?”

Both Sakura and Nadamaru nod, handing a leather bag to Mikata who takes it gratefully. He's the youngest of them all, having barely made chūnin when the war started. He's the best infiltrator of them all, his lithe body and small height ideal for stealth. Since the beginning of the conflict, he's been the one making sure the traps are all working, and scouting the enemy camps.

He's also incredibly smart, not that the three others aren't, but he's on par with the Nara, which makes him ideal to work with Shikamaru. The two of them has been planning every move of the Haruno Clan, approved by the Clan Head and the three others, but they're responsible for their most successful actions.

Sometimes, Sakura has to take a step back and remind herself why they're fighting. It's the bloodiest, most vicious conflict she's ever been in and she took on a _goddess_. She can't believe it's already been five years since they started fighting, and on the worst days, when she's seen too many people die on either side, she can't believe it's _only_ been five years.

What had started as a new law passed by Naruto's Administration had turned into protests and countless strikes, which in turn had become an endless, single strike that went on for so many months Konoha started to starve, and when winter had come, people were dying of cold, and because no one was working in the hospital anymore, of injuries. It had been a grim time. So the government had passed a new law in a panic, stating that all the striking workers would be counted as traitors if they didn't come back to work.

That had been received as well as could be expected. Not only had the strikers not come back to work, but the civilians had decided to barricade the civilian district, building in one night a wall around it. Then they asked the civilian clans, the rich businessmen, the clans that had half-civilians and half-shinobi like the Haruno, for help. Not a single one of them refused. Suddenly, the civilian district was patrolled by hundred of shinobi, not a single civilian was outside of the wall, and they were self-sufficient since they accounted for all the workers in the village, from every single profession.

They had the land to grow food, the workshops to build whatever they needed, and all the healthcare personnel of the village to take car of them. So, in desperation, the Administration had ordered the shinobi force to march on the district. About a third of them refused to fight their brothers and sisters-in-arms and joined the civilian district to warn them of the incoming battle while feeding into their already respectable ranks.

What was left of the shinobi force was still deadly, and it accounted for some of the strongest and most respectable shinobi clans.

Konoha's first civil war was born.

In the last five years, the village has been turned into a battlefield, each force having about half of the ground, buildings in the middle reduced to rubble with the dead piling up on each side. The civilians have been trained intensely by the shinobi within them, each civilian clan taking on a specialisation of shinobi life.

The Haruno Clan is the Sabotage Unit, the small Hagoromo Clan has been trained as medics by Sakura and the hospital staff. The Tsuchigumo Clan is Interrogation and Intel Gathering. The Yanagikage Clan, though the smallest of them all, is their Hostage Retrieval and Escort Unit. All small, or unknown clans, mostly composed of civilians who now have extensive knowledge in martial arts and shinobi training.

They were the healthiest side, because of the food and the medics and doctors, but the other side had the money to bring in food and medicine and even a few medics from other countries, who kept leaving once they saw the horrors of the civil war, only to be replaced by others.

And then there were the bigger clans. The most famous clans of the village, that everyone knew about, the Noble Clans who had been the pride of Konohagakure before this bloody civil war started. They didn't have a choice. They had to take sides.

Some never recovered from it.

Sakura hugs Mikata briefly, who is also a cousin of hers, and Hanako, technically her sister-in-law. When the war started, all three of Sakura's parents were killed in a raid that was meant as both a hit against her for her support of the civilian side, and against the Haruno. As soon as the civil war spread to the entire village, the Hokage Tower had been swarmed by a suicide run from the civilian side and all records made public, which in turn led to the attack on Sakura's family and clan.

Making the records public was good idea, because it allowed for clearer goals for their side and ammunition against the other. But it also meant that the Haruno kekkei-genkai, a State secret since Mito's marriage, was made public. The Uzumaki who were born with this particular gene were integrated within Konoha with the rest of the refugees from Uzushio, and to protect them from the backlash their kekkei-genkai would cause, they changed their name and became the Haruno Clan. And now their secret is out, and it caused assassins to come and kill her two mothers and her father, who were respectively the previous Clan Head, Clan Second and part of the Haruno Council.

In one night, she lost the three most important people in her life and the assassins' plan almost worked. She had been hit so hard by the three simultaneous losses that she had almost ended her own life in a fit of madness. Only Shikamaru's intervention had saved her life. Her aunt and uncle, twin siblings, had been named Clan Head and Clan Second in replacement, and herself became a Haruno councillor. As per Haruno tradition, she had been adopted by the first willing family, her great-cousin and his husband, and she became Nadamaru's sister, who was in turn married to Hanako.

She always loved the sense of family her clan has, how you could just choose who you would live with, how children navigated homes like safe havens. The Haruno would either marry out of love and have children that they would keep, or they didn't feel it was the right time for them and have children anyway that would be raised by the community. And those who didn't marry young or didn't marry at all would be encouraged to have one night stands and have children for community raising as well.

That was how Sakura was born, from one of her aunts, though she didn't know which one, and didn't care. Her mother and father had a child who they gave to the community, and when they met her other mother years later, they decided they were ready to raise a child and adopted Sakura, who was seven at the time and completely happy to be cared for by the fifty parents of the Haruno Clan.

That's how it works, and she thinks it's brilliant and she doesn't understand how only the Haruno, what's left of the Uzumaki, and the Hagomoro, raise their children that way.

Thinking bitterly that those cultural differences were the reason the civil war even existed, she kisses Nadamaru's forehead before shunshining away towards the headquarters of the rebellion, where all the clans and families have a representative to coordinate their side's actions. She needs to get the pages newly translated from the records they stole from the Hokage Tower, hundreds of scrolls scavenged from Uzushio after its fall and kept a secret inside the Tower, without ever informing the remaining Uzumaki of what is theirs by right.

They have a woman who specializes in studying dead and old languages, who is translating the scrolls painstakingly to give all the information on seals she can find to the two Haruno, who are crafting seal after seal in a hope to gain a clear advantage against the other side.

In the HQ, she finds a hive of activity, all clans mixed with one another in a constant buzz of intel and planning and headcounting. In the back of the room, there are desks aligned to face the organized chaos, where the representatives are sitting side by side, all working on different projects or talking between themselves.

Instead of going straight to the translator, Sakura makes a beeline for the desks, a smile already forming on her face. There are little signs in front of each desk, drawn by the children of the clans in adorable, wonky kanji and symbols. She doesn't even try to stop the swell of pride that she feels whenever she sees how many clans and families they gathered for their cause.

On the far left, the Hagamoro representative, then the Tsuchigomo, his chair empty since they managed to capture a Sarutobi and everyone from the clan is on deck to try and get as much out of him, as soon as possible. Next, the silk black hair and single white eye of Hyūga Neji. The Noble Clan had been a total surprise, one of the first to join the rebellion when it was only the Fuma Clan, Ichiraku family and Haruno Clan. He raises his head when he senses her coming, sending her a warm smile that she returns with pleasure.

Next to Neji, another empty chair because more often than not, he's in the training ground helping the weakest fighters, is Lee's desk. His clan is tiny, just him, an adopted Tenten, and the child Sakura and him had together after the Fourth War. They had a brief but incredibly loving relationship, that had healed them both in ways they hadn't expected, and a precious boy had been born from them. Takumi is seventeen now, a taijutsu master like his parents, ridiculously handsome with his long pink hair, always braided, and his lovely dark eyes.

After the empty chair, the Yanagikage elder, then Aburame Shibi. The tragedy of the Aburame Clan had been one of the great costs of the war. One of the Noble Clan, and as of today, the last to defect the Administration side to join the rebellion, their choice had enraged fiercely all the remaining clans and families of the other side. When Shibi had announced his decision, the others had decided to prevent their defection. There had been a mass assassination, and only the few Aburame who had been on the other side of Konoha for negotiations had been spared. Shibi, Shino, Torune and their mother Kanbai, are the only Aburame left.

The second tragedy, and arguably the worst, shows in the dark circles and empty eyes of Akimichi Okashi, Chōji's mother. When the Akimichi had tried to join the rebellion, the Yamanaka had stood against them, in a move that shocked both sides. Their battle had been bloody, ruthless, and tragic. Friends fighting friends, to the death. The Akimichi won. Barely. There are no Yamanaka left, and the Akimichi are half their original number. Chōji is a trainer, alongside Lee and others, and his mother leads the clan.

Next to Okashi, the Fuma Clan, the Ichiraku family, and finally, the Haruno Clan representative. Shikamaru is bent over a pile of paperwork, his pink hair falling over his eyes in an obviously annoying manner given the frustrated, repetitive movement of his fingers to try and put it behind his ear.

His black bodysuit clings to his broad shoulders in a way that makes Sakura's heart beat, the red Haruno patch proudly displayed on his arm. She ignores the ache of her own missing limb, and goes straight to her husband. Only after being a few metres from him does she notice the black strap around his torso, holding the sling that presses their youngest against his back. And playing under the desk, crafting a story of wooden toys and adventures, are their two other children.

She revels in the joy of seeing her family, safe and whole, despite the circumstances. With a flush on her cheeks and her grin matching the beat of her heart, she finally reaches the desk and leans against it.

“Hello, Haruno-sama,” she purrs, enjoying the adoring look Shikamaru gives her instantly, like nothing could make his day better than to have her at his side.

“Hello, Haruno-sama,” he answers with unashamed fondness, his hand reaching for hers. He brings her knuckles to his lips, kissing it twice in a way that still brings blood to her cheeks.

“I have important news for you. I haven't told anyone, because I made the call that you should hear it first.” Shikamaru is deadly serious, his eyes flashing white for a moment, the Haruno kekkei-genkai showing through his stoic facade.

She knows this game since childhood, so her hand squeezes his and she sends a burst of consciousness through their point of contact, her mind flashing images to his to convey love and calm and what she talked about with her three clansmen. Her eyes shine a blinding white before turning back to green when the connection stops. Shikamaru nods once, before grabbing his file, ordering it without need in an obvious nervous gesture.

“Get it over with. If it's going to hurt me, I'll heal better with time and the soonest you tell me, the soonest I can deal with it. And if it's going to make me angry, well, delaying won't change that,” she chuckles, her attempt at humour falling flat when Shikamaru grimaces.

“Well, here goes.” He takes a deep breath. “In our last sabotage run, we planted bombs over the supply roads to cut their food chain. But what set off the bombs wasn't a food caravan, but a full escort and delegation for Suna. Apparently, after five years of trying to hide the war, they were getting desperate enough to ask for help. Which they won't get, since everyone is dead.”

“Anata,” Sakura says softly, the pet name rolling of her tongue more like a reproach. He nods again.

“Sasuke, Naruto and Kakashi were all in the delegation.”

Sakura freezes, her mind going numb. Suddenly, she can only hear white noise, the chaos of the headquarters thinning down to a bare hum. She sways on her feet, before the information slams into her like a battering ram. The noise comes back in a wave, crashing into her in a second strike.

“They're dead,” she whispers.

“They are. And when the sabotage team made a quick sweep of the scene for anything useful to scavenge and identify the bodies, they also found the prison's location. Five years, but it was so worth it.”

“Did they—?”

“Yes. Everyone. Sai was starved and probably tortured, he's in the Hagamono's care. And they got...” Shikamaru is chocked up suddenly, looking down at his desk. “They got my mom and seven Nara out.”

Sakura breathes deep, taking in everything, from the death of the people who ruined their life for so long and caused a civil war, to the retrieval of some of the most important people in Shikamaru's life. He's been a Haruno for five years now, having joined when they decided to adopt Yozora from the community raising. He did the ceremony, got the kekkei-genkai that turned his hair pink, like every Haruno child. He became Haruno Shikamaru of Clan Haruno, because he wanted to be a part of something and being a part of Sakura's clan made the most sense. At the time, he thought to be the only Nara left.

Sakura's heart feels full to bursting knowing he'll get some of his family back. Not that her and their children aren't his family, but she's so glad he'll get those eight Nara in his life again.

And she'll be able to see Sai again...

For the first time since hearing the news, a smile breaks out on her face, her eyes welling up with all the tears she didn't shed the last five years. Shikamaru is getting up from his desk, carefully avoiding Yozora and Sora next to his feet, before gathering her up in his arms.

“They're dead,” she whispers against his hair, heart wild and feeling like she can finally breathe.

“They are, love. They're dead.”

“Without them, the Uchiha and the Senju won't have any leaders, and they won't be able to rebuild the Hatake. We've basically won the war.”

“And don't forget that we can now tell our Uzumaki they can finally elect a proper Clan Head,” Shikamaru smiles, fierce and proud.

“They're going to be so happy,” she giggles.

Shikamaru's voice is soft. “Our cousins,” he states, like a fact of the universe that makes him unbearably happy.

“Kura? What's going on?”

They pull themselves apart, turning to look at the rest of Sakura's squad where they just entered the headquarters. Sakura grins wide, feeling like a God and a leader at the same time, her blood pumping through her veins like the sweetest confirmation of everything they stood for in the last five years.

“Sasuke, Naruto and Kakashi are dead,” she announces to her brother, sister-in-law and cousin, face illuminated with glee.

“You're kidding me,” Hanako whispers. “You're kidding me!”

“Yes!” Nadamaru grabs his wife by the shoulders and kisses her hard on the mouth, uncaring for her open, wide eyes. Mikata's shock is so sweet to see, and that's when Sakura and Shikamaru notice the people standing him one by one, getting closer to them.

The news is spreading like wildfire, all the people working in the headquarters passing the information along like water on a summer day, and more and more smiles and laughter and tears are appearing. The noise in the building reaches critical levels, and no one cares. They've practically won the war.

“We're going to be alright,” Shikamaru says, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and putting his chin on her shoulder.

“Yes we are,” she says softly as her children wander next to them, curious and happy.


End file.
